Your first automation

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An automation is a recurring instruction handed to one agent. It leaves on its own at the times you set, and it becomes active the moment you create it.

What a run costs

Runs are billed after the fact, at real cost. Nothing is held in advance, and the work already done is always applied. A run that fails is billed, because its model calls happened. A run stopped by its time ceiling is not, because the call was still in flight.

The cost cap defaults to 0.30 dollar per run and can go up to 5 dollars. A run gets 45 seconds of model time, and at most ten model turns. Messages you send in the Automations chat are billed like Code messages, same credits, same rules. Automations holds the full table, case by case, including a short balance and a run above its cap.

1. Switch the thread to Automations

The switch sits above the message box, next to Code. Each thread keeps its own conversation memory, so the agent never reads what you wrote on the other side.

One trap here. The response mode selector is not displayed in this thread, but a mode you picked in Code stays active. If you had chosen Ask, you are still in read only with nothing on screen to tell you.

2. Create an agent

Open My agents, then Create an agent. You write a title, when it should be called in, its business function, what it knows how to do, its autonomy, its memory and its job description. The job description is the instruction it follows.

Two fields are written once and never again: the business function and the tools. An agent created with no tool ticked hands back a written report, forever. Changing that means creating another agent.

3. Choose its autonomy

Three levels exist. It prepares and you sign, which sends nothing without your approval. It acts after one grouped green light, which approves a batch at a time. It acts on its own, reserved for work with no money, no sending and no publishing.

The third level switches off as soon as one of the agent's tools touches money, a sending or a publication. That refusal is enforced by the database, not by the screen.

4. Write the rules it re reads

The Memory screen holds what your agents should know without being told each time. Two scopes exist: business, which serves every agent, and agent, which serves the one it names. An agent re reads your business rules plus its own, never a colleague's.

Rules you wrote and rules MaShop inferred stay in separate groups, and the inferred ones are labelled as inferred to the model. Correcting an inferred rule moves it into the ones you wrote, and it then carries the weight of a signed instruction. At most 40 rules reach a prompt, and each value is cut at 600 characters.

5. Create the automation

Open Automations, then Create an automation. Give it a title, the agent that carries it, the instructions, a cadence and a time zone.

• Instructions are required. Every run starts from a fresh context, so write the whole instruction, not a reminder.
• Cadence. Once only, every day, or certain days of the week. Nothing triggers on events today.
• The agent is final. An automation handed to another role is a different automation.
• Editing freezes a version. Changing the instructions, the schedule or the model writes a new version. What is queued carries the version that left, and the executor runs that one.
• The time zone belongs to the project, not to the agent, and only the owner changes it.

It is active at once. The dispatcher passes every 15 minutes and will see it at the next slot.

6. Sign what it prepares

Approvals holds one card per pending action: what the agent proposes, who prepared it, when, and what your signature triggers. Always signs it and stops asking for that action, and that button disappears on anything touching money. Refuse takes the card out of the queue and points you back to the agent.

Be clear about what Sign does today. The only tool that fills this queue writes an email draft, and MaShop has no way to send an email. Signing closes the card, and nothing leaves. The tool says so itself when it files the card: your draft is waiting for a signature, and nothing has gone out. Copy the text and send it from your own mailbox.

Signing a card of that kind also answers that no action was being held back. That is expected. The draft was already written when the card appeared, so the signature has nothing left to release.

Who may sign follows the verb, not the amount. A refund, a charge or an invoice requires the owner, unless the owner opened that right to editors. A request MaShop cannot read is treated as the most expensive case and requires the same signature.

7. Read the run history

Run history is a vertical timeline, 20 entries per page, with a filter per agent. A failed run carries its reason in clear on its card. A successful run shows only when it ran, how long it took and how many tokens it used, never what it produced. The counter beside the list counts what is loaded, not the total.

What MaShop can actually execute today

Two tools run inside MaShop: one reads your Supabase data, one saves an email draft. Tools coming from a server you branched over MCP also run. The call is relayed to that server as it stands, under the same permission gate, with 20 seconds to answer and 4 000 characters of reply kept.

The rest of the catalogue does not run. The 118 tool names translated on screen describe what agents would like to do, and the 23 published by the six official connectors are among them. An automation whose agent needs one of those is suspended as needing a look on its first attempt, without trying and without charge.

MaShop installs no agents and no skills by default, so the catalogue and the Skills screen start empty.

When nothing leaves

• The agent was paused after the work was queued. The run stops and nothing is done.
• The agent changed version after the work was queued. The run stops and nothing is done. The frozen version is the point.
• A slot was missed while the system was down. Catch up replays the last missed occurrence at most. Three silent days never produce three reminders.
• Nothing tells you approvals are waiting. No tab in the Automations rail carries a counter. Open Briefing or Approvals to find out.
• The screen says automations are not available yet. Their table is missing from the database and the migration is still to be applied. Nothing of yours was deleted, and nothing on your side fixes it. The whole face stays inert until that migration lands.